The Rants & Rambles of A Grumpy Old Dude

Tag Archives: hamster wheel

The first rule of blogging is that there are no rules about blogging. Blogs don’t have to be long, or short, or funny, or serious, or, as I recently discovered, about what you were going to make one about.

I’ve been assembling one in my mind for several days. It was going to be all about man’s inhumanity to man, and how, even in the holiday period, people still seem to go out of their way to screw someone else over for lazy or selfish reasons. Then I got THE FLU. Now I understand what SavortheFolly was talking about on her site, hot flashes, cold spells, weak, can’t concentrate…..

I originally started this blog over a week ago and got as far as concentrate, above and then did or didn’t do something, and lost the 800/900 words that followed. I couldn’t post that little bit without the hook and punchline, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it back. Not terribly technically savvy at the best of times, the flu just made things exponentially worse. I did learn that the first rule of blogging is really, “Learn to run the platform, so that s**t like that doesn’t happen again.”

I mentioned to the wife that I was unusually weak, and couldn’t concentrate enough to do the Inhumanity one, and she said, just do one about getting the flu. A spark of genius, but I was in no condition for it to be mine.

First of all, the wife is in charge of getting colds and flu at our house. She already suffers from fibromyalgia, which can render her weak and sore. If some guy in Hong Kong sneezes, she’s in bed for two weeks. I don’t get sick! If she passes something on to me, I have a little k’choo, and twelve hours later I’m as normal as I ever am. I lost two consecutive days of work, forty years ago. She’s never seen me SICK since.

I can’t talk logic to an emotional wife. It’s just the flu. I don’t normally get it this bad, but I’ll be over it in two weeks. Yeah, right! She drags me off to the clinic, where she finds that she has a bacterial cold, for which the doctor gives her medication. I, on the other hand, have a case of viral flu, for which they can and will do nothing. Take a week off and call us if you die.

My dad used to say, about bad infections like this, that there would be a couple of days when you were afraid that you were going to die, followed by a couple more, where you were afraid you wouldn’t. This is now officially a zombie blog, because I’m pretty sure I died and came back to life.

I have a much more accurately empathetic understanding of what the wife goes through 4 or 5 times a winter. I couldn’t believe the lethargy and sleepiness. If the house was on fire and I didn’t have to reach too far for a phone, I’d have to call someone to come and drag me out of my chair and rescue me. Just getting up to go pee was a five-minute project.

The aches and pains meant that I wasn’t sleeping well, at a time when I needed more sleep than usual to combat the infection. When I needed to sleep, I NEEDED TO SLEEP. I could be reading a newspaper, or trying to have a conversation with someone, and suddenly just have to lie on the couch for a nap. I would be wrestling Morpheus and dead to the world before my head hit the cushion. Could be twenty minutes, could be two or three hours.

One of the strange symptoms of this flu was hypersensitivity on parts of my body. One of my cats reached over to touch my side, to get my attention. No claws, just petting me as I might pet him, and I thought that he had beat me with a leather belt.

I’d gained about ten pounds since I retired two years ago. The only plus I see to this flu attack, is that I have no interest in food and too little strength to chase down even a couple of pieces of toast. I could stand to lose some more, and what I’ve lost will probably come back, but two weeks of flu have lost me ten pounds of weight.

As I told the wife, it’s been another week and I feel better. Like the guy in the Benylin TV ad, I’m not better, but I feel better. I’ve finally woke up both the hamsters in my head and got them facing in the same direction on that little wheel. This morning I had two coherent thoughts in a row.

What a whiny little personal rant this has been. If you don’t get colds and flu, you are now congratulating yourself. If you do get them this bad, at least you are reassured that others also get them as bad, support in discomfort.

Thanx for reading, and I hope to have something a little more intellectual and less depressing in a couple more days.